The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1887-02-16
The Young Milton.

Most people seem to experience an
odd difficulty in realizing that the very
greatest personages of the past ever
were young. Yet this conception is
necessary, if we wish to see them as
they really were, and not according to
the textbooks and other sources of
illusory tradition. Milton, for instance;
who does not think of him habitually
as the "blind old bard?" To test this,
let any one arrange to have the name
brought suddenly before the attention
at an odd moment and see what kind
of image presents itself to the mag ma
tion In response to the word. Ten to
one it will prove to be venerable but
sightless and piteous figure, confused
mixture of several superimposed
images, of which the most prominent
may be some dolorous frontispiece en-
craving of op-shouldered bust, or
the blind, pathetic form in Munkacsy's
vivid group. 1t needs but an instant's
reflection to see that this is a very in
adequate and unfortunate conception
of the actual Milton in his best
days. True, he was both old
and blind when the two Paradises
were committed to paper, but not when
they were first conceived in his crea-
tive brain. And what of that long
period of his middle manhood, when
he was not only poet but statesman,
and diplomatic, and terrible fighter for
free thought and free government-an
erect, active figure, as full of force and
fire as any trooper of them all? What
of the still earlier days, when the beau
tiful young fellow charmed the hearts
of man and maid, cunning at fence,
of the literal sort as well as in all the
elegant intricacies of italian sonne-
teering and polished statecraft? For
my part, l like best to remember the
outward aspect Of Milton as he appears
in Vertue's engraving from the Onslow
portrait at the age of ola jocund
youngster, with laugh ng, dark, gray,
eyes, and fresh, manly face; full of the
sap so soon to mature into the tough
oak that helped-he more than almost
any man, if we consider his having
been both brain and pen to Cromwell,
besides his own incessant prose polemics
on the side of freedom-to wrestle out
our modern liberties in that fierce tug
of the great revolution. 1t was at just
the time of this lovely boy-portrait
that he was writing to his college mate
"Festivity and poetry are not incom-
patible. Why should it be different
with you? But, indeed, one sees the
triple influence of Bacchus, Apollo,
and Ceres in the verses you have sent
me. And then, have you not music
the harp lightly touched by nimble
hands, and the lutte giving time to the
fair ones as they dance in the old tap
estried room? Believe me, where the
ivory keys leap and the accompanying
dance goes round the perfumed hall,
there will the song-god be-"
The teachers of literature might we'll
make some effort to rehabilitate these
misimagined worthless of the past, to
remove from them the DISCUSSES of age
and senilitv that too reverent ira
dition has thrown about them, and to
present them in that bloom of manhood
belonging to the period of their greater
activity. If l were professor of lit.
erature / should desire to hang my
lecture-room with pictures-not of the
old traditional and forbidding decrepi-
tudes, but of Milton, for example, as
the charming young swordsman, with
velvet coat tossed on the ground, and
rapier in hand; of Homer, no longer
bl nd and prematurely agonized, as il
were, with our modern perplexities In
finding him a birthplace, but as the
| splendid young Greek athlete, limbed
and weaponed like his own youthful
vision of Apollo.